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A review by britt3445
The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley
2.0
The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley
⭐️⭐️ // Frustrating, slow, but hard to shake.
I didn’t enjoy this book, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It’s a short read, but feels heavy and strange. I picked it up after seeing the trailer with Willem Dafoe and expected a tense psychological thriller. What I got instead was quiet and slow-paced, with very little action or payoff.
Despite the title, the man in the basement barely feels like a main character. Most of the focus is on the narrator’s inner thoughts and his constant, often distracting sex life, while the actual basement scenes are rare. The setup itself feels too unrealistic to take seriously.
That said, I do see what this book is doing. It explores race, power, guilt, masculinity, and what it means to be complicit in systems we claim to oppose. There’s symbolism and weight in these pages, even if it’s buried under a strange, meandering plot. I didn’t like it, but I can’t stop thinking about it, and that says something.
⭐️⭐️ // Frustrating, slow, but hard to shake.
I didn’t enjoy this book, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It’s a short read, but feels heavy and strange. I picked it up after seeing the trailer with Willem Dafoe and expected a tense psychological thriller. What I got instead was quiet and slow-paced, with very little action or payoff.
Despite the title, the man in the basement barely feels like a main character. Most of the focus is on the narrator’s inner thoughts and his constant, often distracting sex life, while the actual basement scenes are rare. The setup itself feels too unrealistic to take seriously.
That said, I do see what this book is doing. It explores race, power, guilt, masculinity, and what it means to be complicit in systems we claim to oppose. There’s symbolism and weight in these pages, even if it’s buried under a strange, meandering plot. I didn’t like it, but I can’t stop thinking about it, and that says something.